A Quiet Monday
by azzami
Summary: Jiraiya,and when he was young,and his memories...


hi,everybody!this is just a simple story about jiraiya and i guess,his memories and when he was young...i'm not too sure about the facts,though,i hope people'll correct me if they see if its wrong...which it most likely is,anyway.

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Memories were like motes of dust and sunlight that spin and twirl slowly in the air,so very slowly.And when you reach out to try and touch or make a daring grab for one,it would dance out of your reach,laughing at your clumsy attempt to retrieve it.And you would stand there,quietly disappointed,while still being surrounded by so many tantailising memories.

Jiraiya was one of _those _type of people who can run like hell to try and catch something,and when they _still _lose it,still managed to grin and laugh.It didn't go this way for Orochimaru and Tsunade.Orochimaru would probably go slitty eyed and not speak to anyone for the rest of the day,while Tsunade would turn anyone who came close to her to meat pancake.

Jiraiya didn't care.It was just one of those things that made his team so difficult and easy to get along at the same time.To be honest,he innocently and rather naively thought that his team would survive anything the world threw at them,and still come out in a seperate entity and yet a whole in the end.

So when he learnt that Orochimaru was caught during horrendous experiments on his own villagers and was declared a criminal and a traitor,he fainted dead away.

He came back to the village again when he was 21 years,older and a thousand times wiser now.He didn't knew why he came back,for a simple fancy and whim to see his old home again.So he went to old man Sandaime Hokage,greeted him,drank everyone under the table in the sake party held specially for him and went to a little room he rented for a while.

And he stayed there for a few weeks,doing nothing,just simple missions that he took on for the heck of it.To prove how smart and talented he was,he guessed.He was slightly shocked when he thought this.This was the kind of thought that Orochimaru would think...

So he left,quietly,silently and professionally,the way a shinobi should,in the dead of the velvet deep night.

History repeats itself,often and often again,as you can see so many times penned and recorded in the great scrolls of time.And history repeated itself again,when Jiraiya came back,without a warning,3 years later.It was a very,very short time-length.

So he again,went quietly to old man Sandaime Hokage(pausing for several hours to peep at some naked women),and stated,rather calmly and matter-of-factly(after being drunk all the way to Iwa in yet another sake party),that he wanted to take up,temporarily,_temporarily_,the position of Academy teacher.

Again,for the simple fancy and whim of it.For the sheer _thrill _of knowing you had experienced yet another thing,learning yet another tiny little scrap of knowledge,no matter how small it was.

Old man Sandaime Hokage watched him carefully,then consented to it.

On the first day of his(he wanted to think,short stint)Academy teacher role,he had to use a kunai and plenty of shurikens and a metre of metal wire to tie up two miscreants.And then he had to try to figure out how to teach history without he himself nodding off.And also how to teach a bunch of insane,psychotic coffee-mad kids to use a senbon without killing them.

Jiraiya went back to his rented room,filled with weariness but also an insane happiness.Oh,now this is fun.

So he struggled through his second day messily again,this time having to send a girl to the hospital,but feeling glad and happy and weary all at the same time,all over again.

However...

This second day was just a teensy bit different.

On the second day,when he began to try to clean up the horrendous mess that was once known as a _classroom_,he saw a slim,bone white boy with flat snake-like yellow eyes.The boy had long unnaturally straight neat hair falling down to his waist,a maddening contrast to Jiraiya's hair.The boy's attire was torn and had an unmistakaebly tattered look about it.

He was holding a small pencil in one hand and writing something onto the desk in front of him.Jiraiya walked forward,feeling a nervous feeling creep over him.He bent over and read the small,neat words.

_Mama was crying today._

Four simple words.

Then the boy stood up and walked through the stock-still Jiraiya and opened a ghostly door seen only by him,and left the class in the blink of an eye.

Jiraiya was shaking.

_Orochimaru._

The subsequent days were the same,and he learned to accept the quiet,ghostly presence of the boy Orochimaru as normal.The boy Orochimaru sometimes stared out of the window at the cliff,a look of immense longing written all over his pale face.He never quite figured out what he was longing for.

It had not quite escaped his notice that the seat was unoccupied.

After the pencil incident,the boy Orochimaru never wrote on his desk again.He just simply sat through the lessons,rolling the pencil in his hand,tossing it from hand to hand in a slight gesture of impatience.And when the bell rang,he would walk out behind his classmates,head held down.

Jiraiya followed him once on a Wednesday,and found out that he went to the fish pond to throw rocks in,and then he would just stand there,watching the ripples crawl away from the tiny pebble,spreading out in huge,ever-widening circles,only to disappear again.

Occasionally,the boy Orochimaru would bite his small pencil and doodle on a scrap of ghostly paper,before crumpling it up and putting it neatly on the desk.Jiraiya would try to read what the notes said,and he felt rather ill and upset at himself and all his classmates long ago.

Yes.He was Orochimaru's classmate.

_Hana and Ikka wouldn't lend me their excercise books._

_Jiraiya called me "Snake-face"._

_Mama was ill again._

_Mama was coughing blood._

_Ryuu-sensei picked on me again._

_I hate everybody._

_Mama is dead._

He decided to quit his Academy Teacher position after reading the last note.

He never saw the memory again,never in his lifetime would he see something like that again ,he knew it well.However,on occasions while he was still staying in the village or teaching that blonde brat and his new team(yes,Sandaime-Hokage stuffed a team on him),when he took a stroll around the Academy on a very quiet Monday,he would see ripples spreading from the center of the fish pond,where no rock has touched.


End file.
